This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Conservatives playing politics with anti-terror bill: Tim Harper

OTTAWA—As we continue to digest the nightmare that played out in Boston last week, it would appear timely to have our parliamentarians come together in the House of Commons to debate an anti-terrorism bill.

It would be a great idea if the “root cause” of the debate set to begin Monday wasn’t so nakedly political.

The real reason for the debate isn’t the sense of urgency engendered by last week’s Boston Marathon bombings, as Government House Leader Peter Van Loan would have you believe, but the sense of urgency among Conservatives that they must try to discredit newly minted Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.

It is a discredit to the Canadian political body as a whole that while our neighbours to the south were dealing with death, casualties and a manhunt which locked down a major U.S. city, our political leaders were consumed with parsing terrorism comments made on the CBC by Trudeau.

Article Continued Below

The Liberal leader himself tried to change the channel beginning Monday, a Liberal opposition day, by introducing a motion that would empower the restive Conservative backbench.

Yes, this is just as nakedly political.

Trudeau’s Liberals would have given MPs from all parties the right to make statements in the House free from the constraints of party whips, a key demand of the government bobbleheads who have apparently had enough of the constraints placed upon them by the Prime Minister’s Office.

Under the Liberal plan, speaking slots would be allocated in alphabetical order, with MPs able to give up their slots and pass it down the line by informing the Speaker an hour before 2 p.m., when statements are made before question period.

But this isn’t about parliamentary process. A major embarrassment loomed for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

It would have taken a mere 12 government MPs to back Trudeau — assuming the NDP supported the motion — to change the rules and remove the government leash.

It was only after receiving notice of the Trudeau motion that the government found the urgency of passing the anti-terrorism bill, which has already passed the Senate and has been sitting in the Commons, ignored and untended, since February.

The most notable new measure in the legislation would make it a criminal offence to leave, or try to leave the country to commit terrorism.

“We don’t need further study. We need action,’’ said Van Loan, a minister in a majority government that ignored the bill.

This has the whiff of a government without an agenda, making it up as it goes along.

Since introducing its budget last month, it has been on the defensive over charges from both opposition parties that increasing duties on imports from more than 70 countries is tantamount to a tax increase on the middle class.

Friday, it had to admit it goofed in not including hockey helmets on a list of goods that had tariffs removed in a bid to relieve any pain caused by the duty hikes.

It has been on its heels over abuses of its temporary foreign workers program.

So what better gambit than to dust off old anti-terrorism legislation, play to Canadians’ fears and give itself the opportunity to exploit what it believes to be Trudeau’s soft-on-terrorism answers in the wake of the Boston bombings?

The Trudeau backbench empowerment motion will still get its day, pushed back two days to Wednesday.

That gives Harper and his caucus lieutenants a couple more days to work on the would-be rebels, either through a compromise or a promise of government changes.

The government will not allow Trudeau to dictate parliamentary change that could damage the Conservatives.

That means Wednesday morning’s Conservative caucus meeting, a weekly gathering that usually drew the same level of attention as the gathering of the evening Commons cleaning staff, will again be a focus of the week on Parliament Hill.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com